Death sentence

July 24, 2006—Stephen Johnson served New York with valor
for 21 years as a firefighter on the nation's preeminent force.
He was a man who put the safety of others above his own. He loved
the work - and it cost him his life.

Breathing WTC toxins killed Firefighter Stephen
Johnson.

Michelle Godbee and children Imani (l.) and Kai
lost husband and father James Godbee to WTC illness.

Ground Zero poisons took Debbie Reeve from husband
David and children Elizabeth and Mark.

On Aug. 6, 2004, Stephen Johnson died from service in the line
of duty at age 47. Yet the rolls of honor do not bear his name,
nor has the mayor or the fire commissioner stood in public tribute
to this fallen hero.

For Stephen Johnson is a forgotten victim of 9/11.

The official record carries Johnson as a retired firefighter who
passed away after a heart attack and a bout with a lung ailment
two years after he left the force. This is because, callously and
in disregard of overwhelming evidence, the City of New York has
refused to acknowledge even the likelihood that working around the
smoldering rubble of the World Trade Center proved fatal to anyone.

But that is precisely what killed Johnson, whose death stands as
the earliest Ground Zero fatality from disease for which cause and
effect has been established.

And it is precisely what killed Police Officer James Godbee.

And it is precisely what killed Detective James Zadroga.

And it is precisely what killed Emergency Medical Service Paramedic
Debbie Reeve.

They were among the 40,000 people who pulled together in the drive
to restore New York's footing after 9/11. Today, more than 12,000
members of that brave army are ill because they were exposed to
the toxic cloud that hovered over what became known as The Pile.

Officials falsely assured them the air was safe. Most were not
provided with or did not wear respiratory protection.

The vast majority of the sick suffered damage to their respiratory
tracts from breathing air thick with particles, including concrete
dust, pulverized glass and asbestos. The materials, in effect, burned
the air passages, causing inflamed sinuses, bronchitis and reactive
airways dysfunction syndrome, or RADS, an irritant-induced asthma.

A smaller number of Ground Zero responders contracted even more
serious illnesses, and some died. How many developed their conditions
as a consequence of working at The Pile cannot now be established,
and medical experts are skeptical about proving a causal relationship
in most cases.

But there can be no reasonable doubt that Ground Zero service cost
Johnson, Godbee, Zadroga and Reeve their lives. Where Johnson and
Reeve are concerned, the FDNY's top physicians, Drs. Kerry Kelly
and David Prezant, say they believe this is so. The evidence is
just as strong for Godbee and Zadroga.

"How else do you account for it?" Kelly said, referring
to Reeve's death.

It is long past time to set the record straight about fatalities
among the forgotten victims of 9/11 — to honor those who have
died, to keep faith with history and to provide the sick with the
fullest information.

It's time for Mayor Bloomberg to recognize Johnson, Godbee, Zadroga
and Reeve as heroes who died from illnesses sustained in the line
of duty, and to express New York's gratitude to their loved ones.

It's time for the mayor, upon whom we have called to lead a campaign
for all forgotten victims of 9/11, to declare that New York owes
the Johnson, Godbee, Zadroga and Reeve families every possible benefit
— and to order city lawyers to stop unconscionably fighting
against giving the families their due.

It's time to confront what happened to Johnson, Godbee, Zadroga
and Reeve in the knowledge that medical experts say others may well
develop serious, even fatal, illnesses as the 9/11 health disaster
unfolds. Let them not be forgotten, too.

Stephen Johnson

On March 11, 1999, Kalodner was the mother of 6-month-old twins,
and she and the babies were trapped by a fire on the ninth floor
of a Manhattan building. Up a fully extended tower ladder came Johnson
and his partner Matt Barnes.

Strapped to the top of the aerial, arms and legs stretched as far
as possible, Barnes took the infants from Kalodner and passed them
to Johnson, who carried the babies to safety. The partners were
feted at City Hall, and the Daily News named Barnes its Hero of
the Month. Less than two years later, Barnes was killed on 9/11
and Johnson went to work at Ground Zero, there when the toxic cloud
was thickest, there when the job required wading in dust up to his
knees. He was a big, strapping guy, fit and healthy, and his every
breath moved him closer to death.

In April 2002, still healthy, Johnson retired from a job that was
a joy of his life. "Next to me, it was the only other thing
he loved," said his widow, Rose.

Early in 2004, Johnson became short of breath while shoveling snow.
Over the next few weeks, his shortness of breath worsened. That
March, he went to a hospital, where doctors feared he was suffering
a heart attack. That wasn't the case, and that May he was diagnosed
with interstitial lung disease, or ILD.

Caused by inhaling irritants, ILD is a rare condition found, for
example, in miners who work amid coal dust. The presence of particles
in the lung provokes the body to try to combat them as it would
fight a germ. The immune system surrounds the particles with cells
that build up into nodules known as granulomas. Granulomas retard
breathing, can cause lesions and lead to irreversible scarring,
called fibrosis, on oxygen-extracting tissues.

By the time Johnson was diagnosed, 80% of his lungs had been destroyed.
He required oxygen 24 hours a day, and joined the waiting list for
a lung transplant. But he never got that far. Suffocating, Johnson
suffered a fatal heart attack.

After 15 years of marriage, Rose Johnson lives by herself in Queens.
She shies from criticizing city officials for their failure to honor
her husband as the first Ground Zero responder to die from an illness
contracted there. Nor does she complain that, until today, the circumstances
of her husband's illness and death have never been reported. But
the pain is obvious in her voice when she recounts her memories
of his loss. Only when she points out that the Bravest at her local
firehouse give her all the support she asks for does her voice brighten.

Rose Johnson has her husband's pension, but not the full-salary
death benefit given to the widows of firefighters who die in the
line of duty. Spouses of retirees are not eligible.

James Godbee

James Godbee was the next responder to die after contracting an
interstitial lung disease.

A 19-year NYPD veteran and father of two, Godbee worked at Ground
Zero for 12 to 15 hours a day for 80 days from Sept. 13, 2001, to
June 2002. Never did he wear respiratory equipment.

In November 2003, Godbee developed a cough, shortness of breath,
joint pains, fever, weight loss and swelling in his salivary and
tear glands. Based on a chest X-ray three months later, his doctors
suspected sarcoidosis, a form of ILD.

Dr. Frank Accera, a pulmonary specialist at Beth Israel Medical
Center, performed a biopsy, during which Godbee's lung collapsed.
The test confirmed the diagnosis.

Sarcoidosis is believed to be caused by contact with irritating
foreign substances, but no irritant has ever been identified as
its trigger. In addition to the lungs, the illness attacks organs
such as the heart, skin and kidneys. Treatable and rarely fatal,
sarcoidosis can lead to "progressive multi-organ failure in
an unfortunate minority" of cases, according to a 1997 study
published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

High dosages of a steroid got Godbee's symptoms under control,
but the drug made him sick to his stomach. Over the next seven months,
Godbee's lung distress fluctuated as he tried to wean off the steroid,
and, feeling generally better, he stopped seeing Accera in October
2004.

Godbee's wife, Michelle, a school guidance counselor, said her
husband continued to work. On Dec. 30, 2004, he felt "a little
down, a little sick," but he nonetheless took the couple's
daughter to a Jim Carrey movie, Michelle Godbee said. At 9:45, he
returned to the family's apartment in Manhattan's Stuyvesant Town,
gave his daughter "a long hug good night," and minutes
later suffered a seizure.

"I called 911. They told me to put him on the floor,"
Michelle Godbee said. "I heard his lungs go down. He was pronounced
DOA at the hospital."

James Godbee was 44. An autopsy found granuloma in his lungs, colon
and heart. In his report on the case, Accera wrote: "It is
with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that I conclude that
Mr. Godbee's exposure to and inhalation of the toxic materials present
at the WTC site after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, either caused
or aggravated his sarcoidosis and ultimately caused his death."

Regardless, the NYPD pension board ruled Godbee had not contracted
sarcoidosis in the line of duty, stating the condition is "not
known to be related to employment in the police force." The
board denied his family the enhanced benefits afforded to cops who
die in the line of duty. When Michelle Godbee took the matter to
court, city lawyers fought her petition — even barring FDNY
doctors, experts in sarcoidosis, from testifying. A judge returned
the matter to the board for further review.

James Zadroga

On Jan. 5 of this year, homicide Detective James Zadroga became
the third responder to succumb to interstitial lung disease.

On the force for six years, Zadroga was inside 7 World Trade Center
as the building began to collapse. He escaped and returned to Ground
Zero, spending more than 450 hours there and at the Staten Island
landfill, where the rubble from the Trade Center was carted. He
wore only a paper mask.

Within a few weeks, Zadroga began to cough. Over the next months,
the formerly healthy 29-year-old developed severe shortness of breath,
acid reflux and sleep apnea. He began passing out and, coughing
incessantly, was unable to walk more than 100 feet without gasping.

Zadroga's downward spiral forced him onto extended sick leave.
By 2003, he required oxygen 24 hours a day. He was rejected three
times for a line-of-duty disability pension; the retirement system's
medical board said he hadn't proven a connection between his Ground
Zero work and his illness.

Only on Zadroga's fourth appeal did the doctors come around. He
retired Nov. 1, 2004. Fourteen months later, with his 4-year-old
daughter Tylerann asleep by his side, Zadroga died at age 34. He
was a widower with $50,000 in medical bills. Grandparents took custody
of the orphaned Tylerann.

The coroner's report listed the cause of death as "granulomatous
pneumonitis."

"It is felt with a reasonable degree of medical certainty
that the cause of death in this case was directly related to the
9/11 incident," wrote Ocean County, N.J., pathologist Dr. Gerard
Breton. His report, often cited as the first official confirmation
that service on The Pile had proven fatal, was dismissed by city
officials as inconclusive.

Debbie Reeve

Debbie Reeve joined the EMS in 1989, working first as an emergency
medical technician and then as a paramedic. Assigned to a haz-mat
unit, she spent more than six months collecting human remains from
The Pile and staffing a Ground Zero morgue.

Early in 2004, Reeve developed a cough and shortness of breath
after exertion. Her doctor diagnosed flu and pneumonia and prescribed
antibiotics that proved useless. Out of sick time, she asked for
clearance to return to work, which required a chest X-ray because
of her haz-mat status. The X-ray led to the discovery of mesothelioma,
a rare cancer caused by asbestos.

From late 2004 until late 2005, Reeve underwent chemotherapy, followed
by removal of her right lung and part of her diaphragm. She had
radiation and was declared cancer-free.

Six weeks later, Reeve starting having pain in her leg and hip,
and X-rays showed mottling in her thigh bones — a sign the
cancer had returned. In January 2006, doctors removed infected marrow
from her legs, but a month later they found cancer in her back,
lung and spine.

On March 15, Reeve died at age 41, leaving an 11-year-old daughter
and a 6-year-old son.

Before her death, Reeve had become the first WTC responder to be
granted a three-quarters disability pension under a special bill
signed in Albany, but she died before receiving a single check.
Her husband, David, also an FDNY paramedic, is now battling for
workers' compensation coverage of $90,000 in medical bills. Opposing
him is the city Law Department, where attorneys have argued both
that he didn't file his claim within a required deadline and that
there's no proof Reeve developed mesothelioma from working at Ground
Zero.

Johnson, Godbee, Zadroga and Reeve are but four of the 9/11 responders
who have suffered serious illnesses. David Worby, a lawyer waging
a suit on behalf of 8,000 WTC responders and their survivors, says,
for example, that more than 170 of his clients have developed cancers
and 57 have died.

Whether those cancers trace to Ground Zero is a matter of conjecture,
but fear is widespread among those who served. This is understandable.
What is not understandable has been the refusal of city officials
to admit even a probability that 9/11 service led to any death.

Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden exemplified the attitude when
he said he would be "surprised" if Zadroga's suffocation
could be conclusively linked to particles breathed in at Ground
Zero. The coroner, he said, had not tested the materials in Zadroga's
lungs to see if they matched exactly with substances at The Pile.

True enough, but that hypertechnicality is far outweighed by the
body of evidence.

Johnson, Godbee, Zadroga and Reeve were healthy, relatively young
nonsmokers before they spent hundreds of hours in the poisonous
cloud at The Pile.

They contracted diseases triggered by inhaling substances that
irritate the lungs.

Other 9/11 responders came down with the same rare illness, interstitial
lung disease, suffered by Johnson, Zadroga and Godbee and survived.
Two firefighters and a civilian worker got the type of ILD that
struck Johnson and Zadroga; 20 firefighters got the variation, sarcoidosis,
that felled Godbee. Among the survivors, the conditions are generally
accepted as being caused by WTC toxins.

Mesothelioma, Reeve's cancer, is found overwhelmingly in people
who have breathed in asbestos. What's surprising is only the speed
with which the disease came on after Reeve was exposed, said the
FDNY's Kelly.

Stephen Johnson, James Godbee, James Zadroga and Debbie Reeve died
because they served New York in a time of need. Then they were forgotten.
Now Mayor Bloomberg must give them the honor they deserve.